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Category: World

I’ve always been completely fascinated by the Capetian dynasty. A family whose rule started in 987, dominated for five centuries and still has royals to this day in Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg and on the throne with King Felipe VI of Spain.

In the USA, when royalty is mentioned it is something that belongs in the past, that isn’t a part of modern times. Yet, just a quick look around the world and royalty is not dead, it still holds sway and power in many parts of the world!

It is very interesting to see that Princess Cristina of Spain, also of the Capetian line is now on trial for tax evasion along with her husband. Apparently the masses and hordes of unwashed have finally put royalty in the corner. How this would simply be unthinkable just a short three hundred years ago!! How rude and vulgar those Spanish judges must be to question a royal! Apparently, their small and feeble minds cannot comprehend that royals are a better sort of people and should not be subject to the laws of lesser people.

Here in the USA we do not have royalty but the same sort of mentality persists. Instead of royalty one simply needs to be extremely rich or perhaps in politics to rise above and consider oneself over the rude and unclean common folk. It is quite apparent in the attitudes and behaviors of those that drive BMW cars here in California. It is as if once one purchases a BMW a dark spell washes over them and they become a dark one.

And this is not just my opinion. The San Francisco Chronicle was kind enough to write an article on the subject.

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While reading my Lapham’s Quarterly I came across the “Requerimiento” (Requirement). This was a written declaration of sovereignty and war, read by Spanish military forces to assert their sovereignty over the Americas.

“It was used to justify the assertion that God, through historical Saint Peter and appointed Papal successors, held authority as ruler over the entire Earth; and that the Inter CaeteraPapal Bull, of 4 May 1493 by Pope Alexander VI, conferred title over all the Americas to the Spanish monarchs.[1] The Requerimiento probably had its origins as early as the 8th century in the Dawah messages sent to non-Muslim nations by Arab conquerors, demanding that their recipients submit to Islamic rule (see Aslim Taslam).[2]“

History repeats itself indeed! The ISIS is taking a page from the Conquistadors who most likely took a page from 8th century Arabs! So much for religion being about peace, love and not killing people.

The Christians might say that this was during a more primitive time so it is unfair to compare. My response to that would be another question. Wouldn’t the teachings of the Bible be universal and timeless since it is supposedly the word of God? Therefore, the only answer could be it is man’s understanding of scriptures that have changed. Yes, the Western nations still make war but in all fairness I do not see any “Christian” armies marauding around, trying to take over more land and threatening people to either convert or die. The Christians already went through that phase back with the Inquisition over 200 years ago.

I do however see “Muslim” groups marauding all over the place and killing people. The elite clerics of various countries stress that this is not Islam and these groups should be condemned. It is hard to say this is not a characteristic of Islam when it keeps repeating itself over and over again. Extremist groups are a concentrated version of the overall religion and belief just as condensed milk is an extreme version of cow’s milk. And when I look around I do not see even the extremely concentrated versions of Christianity beheading people.

“On behalf of the King, Don Fernando, and of Doña Juana I, his daughter, Queen of Castille and León, subduers of the barbarous nations, we their servants notify and make known to you, as best we can, that the Lord our God, Living and Eternal, created the Heaven and the Earth, and one man and one woman, of whom you and we, all the men of the world at the time, were and are descendants, and all those who came after and before us. But, on account of the multitude which has sprung from this man and woman in the five thousand years since the world was created, it was necessary that some men should go one way and some another, and that they should be divided into many kingdoms and provinces, for in one alone they could not be sustained.

Of all these nations God our Lord gave charge to one man, called St. Peter, that he should be Lord and Superior of all the men in the world, that all should obey him, and that he should be the head of the whole Human Race, wherever men should live, and under whatever law, sect, or belief they should be; and he gave him the world for his kingdom and jurisdiction.

And he commanded him to place his seat in Rome, as the spot most fitting to rule the world from; but also he permitted him to have his seat in any other part of the world, and to judge and govern all Christians, Moors, Jews, Gentiles, and all other Sects. This man was called Pope, as if to say, Admirable Great Father and Governor of men. The men who lived in that time obeyed that St. Peter, and took him for Lord, King, and Superior of the universe; so also they have regarded the others who after him have been elected to the pontificate, and so has it been continued even till now, and will continue till the end of the world.

One of these Pontiffs, who succeeded that St. Peter as Lord of the world, in the dignity and seat which I have before mentioned, made donation of these isles and Tierra-firme to the aforesaid King and Queen and to their successors, our lords, with all that there are in these territories, as is contained in certain writings which passed upon the subject as aforesaid, which you can see if you wish.

So their Highnesses are kings and lords of these islands and land of Tierra-firme by virtue of this donation: and some islands, and indeed almost all those to whom this has been notified, have received and served their Highnesses, as lords and kings, in the way that subjects ought to do, with good will, without any resistance, immediately, without delay, when they were informed of the aforesaid facts. And also they received and obeyed the priests whom their Highnesses sent to preach to them and to teach them our Holy Faith; and all these, of their ownfree will, without any reward or condition, have become Christians, and are so, and their Highnesses have joyfully and benignantly received them, and also have commanded them to be treated as their subjects and vassals; and you too are held and obliged to do the same. Wherefore, as best we can, we ask and require you that you consider what we have said to you, and that you take the time that shall be necessary to understand and deliberate upon it, and that you acknowledge the Church as the Ruler and Superior of the whole world, and the high priest called Pope, and in his name the King and Queen Doña Juana our lords, in his place, as superiors and lords and kings of these islands and this Tierra-firme by virtue of the said donation, and that you consent and give place that these religious fathers should declare and preach to you the aforesaid.

If you do so, you will do well, and that which you are obliged to do to their Highnesses, and we in their name shall receive you in all love and charity, and shall leave you, your wives, and your children, and your lands, free without servitude, that you may do with them and with yourselves freely that which you like and think best, and they shall not compel you to turn Christians, unless you yourselves, when informed of the truth, should wish to be converted to our Holy Catholic Faith, as almost all the inhabitants of the rest of the islands have done. And, besides this, their Highnesses award you many privileges and exemptions and will grant you many benefits.

But, if you do not do this, and maliciously make delay in it, I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter into your country, and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can, and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of their Highnesses; we shall take you and your wives and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose of them as their Highnesses may command; and we shall take away your goods, and shall do you all the mischief and damage that we can, as to vassals who do not obey, and refuse to receive their lord, and resist and contradict him; and we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault, and not that of their Highnesses, or ours, nor of these cavaliers who come with us. And that we have said this to you and made this Requisition, we request the notary here present to give us his testimony in writing, and we ask the rest who are present that they should be witnesses of this Requisition.”

——–Update 10.6.2014——————–

I always enjoy when after I’ve written a post on some thought or idea, a mainstream publication also writes an article on that same idea. It lets me know that my ideas are not that far off and I’m not completely crazy.

AlJazeera posted Confidence men and their masquerade which compares ISIS to the Spanish Inquisition. To be honest, I think my comparison with the conquistadors is more on the mark but the Inquisition and fanaticism of the Conquistadors are one and the same so I won’t split any hairs.

At the gym today I had the misfortune to look up at the t.v. which was tuned to CNN. They were covering the Israeli invasion and my blood started to boil.

It appears an Israeli soldier was taken hostage and it was being called a “game changer.”

I absolutely detest the way Americans describe war in terms of a sporting event. But perhaps it is fitting as American media continually roots for one team which is Israel while trying to justify the worst atrocities.

I wonder how many children were killed by Israel today. I’m sure there must be some good reason like Hamas was hiding very ineffective missiles there which mostly are intercepted by their much touted Iron Dome anyway. Seems like a perfectly good reason to kill those little Arabs. I wonder what the accepted Israeli ratio is in terms of dead children to a discovered missile cache or tunnel. Is the discovery of another tunnel worth 10 dead children? 20? Perhaps one tunnel is worth unlimited dead children to Israel?

I’ve seen too many articles these past weeks trying to justify dead kids. Most of the articles put the blame on Hamas which is certainly accurate. Hamas is vile. But the fact remains that the damage Hamas inflicts on Israel is negligent. The damage Israel inflicts on Gaza is obscene.

I find this would be a good time for a quote.

Out of our memory…of the Holocaust we must forge an unshakable oath with all civilized people that never again will the world stand silent, never again will the world…fail to act in time to prevent this terrible crime of genocide….we must harness the outrage of our own memories to stamp out oppression wherever it exists. We must understand that human rights and human dignity are indivisible.

Well apparently this quote is moot when the shoe is on the other foot now isn’t it. Gaza looks pretty much like a concentration camp to seeing as the inhabitants cannot leave and the Israelis are doing their best to kill as many as possible. Yes yes, please tell me how they call and warn the residents they are going to come blow up their house only to throw a shell right on the UN school.

Another event in sporting news is that an Israeli soldier was captured and the American media referred to it as “a game changer.” So let me understand this. Over 1500 dead Gazans with a good portion of that being children is not a game changer but one captured Israeli is?

What do you think happens in a war? What do soldiers do in wars? They kill people! It seems entirely reasonable to me that the Gazans might want to do as much harm as possible to the Israeli soldiers wouldn’t they?

So while I was at the gym they showed this Israeli soldiers picture about 15 times in 45 minutes. Please take a guess how many dead Gazan children they showed.

Zero.

Well, maybe I could just look up the carnage Israel is unleashing on the internet?

Nope!!! Blocked, censored, not allowed! We can only see the image of the captured Israeli over and over and over. No Palestinian dead children allowed please. Nothing to see here.

Here in the US you simply cannot say anything bad against Israeli if you happen to be a politician or in the media. The tentacles of Israel reach deeply into this country and have a stranglehold.

These tentacles run so deep that Israel can commit the most horrible atrocities and the US will not only continue to justify the reasons but fund the bombs that kill these children as well? Why? Because America has a fucking ‘special relationship’ with Israel. Aka, Israel has the US sucking its dick.

And how will all of this play out? Will this latest genocide bring peace to the region and turn all the Gazans into Israel supporters? I think not. Yes, who wouldn’t love a country or race that killed not only someone’s entire family but all the neighbors as well. Hey, after all they sent a memo it was coming didn’t they?

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No need for a long post here and I certainly won’t try to change anyone’s opinion. I just wanted to point out one small blurb in this BBC article.

“It brings the number of Israeli soldiers killed in the current offensive to 18.

The deaths of so many soldiers on a single day will shock Israeli society, the BBC’s Chris Morris reports from southern Israel.”

The number of Palestinians currently killed in the Israeli invasion as of 7/20/2014 stands at 425.

So if I understand this correctly, 425 Palestinians does not shock Israeli society but any more than a few soldiers of their own killed is shocking?

Seems the media continues to be very pro Israel. I read news from a number of sources around the world and in more cases than not the Palestinians are described as terrorists while that word has never been used to describe the Israelis.

Furthermore, in the opinion sections of most dailies I’ve already seen pro Israel pieces aplenty. Know how many pro Palestinian pieces I’ve seen in the Western media?

Zero.

Now that you’ve read the above you might think I’m pro-Palestine? I do not support either side. In one quick paragraph here is how I see it.

Israel has a right to exist. The Palestinians have a right to not be enslaved by Israel and create their own state. Israel should quit oppressing the Palestinians and the Palestinians should quit terrorizing Israel. There you have it.

Unfortunately, I do not see things getting any better. I see war for the next three centuries unless another world war redraws the maps again.

Looks like Russia could climb back up to enemy #1 again after a brief 25 year lull. When the USSR fell the attention turned to random, disorganized terrorists who tried very hard to bring down planes full of innocent people,,,, but Russia actually does it.

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At 36 years of age, I have come to a concrete realization that this world I live in is completely absurd.

It is similar to a lucid dream, where the dreamer becomes aware of the improbability and often outright impossibility of his surroundings and thus realizes he is dreaming while inside of the dream.

I have had the good fortune to travel the world, learn languages and delve deeply into the mindsets of other cultures. These fortunes enabled me to escape from the fishbowl of a small environment and see the enclosure from the outside, as well as compare it to all the other enclosures I have been recently exploring through language study and travel. Through these studies I found such a sense of freedom and excitement that I have never been able to stop or quell my desire for more information, more learning. I found freedom from established traditions, mindsets, beliefs and biases. I found great excitement for the unknown, the new, the exotic, the blasphemous, the feared and the heretical.

Recently however, time, money and obligations have limited my actual travel but in its place have come books, magazines and a need to devour more knowledge. A great discovery I’ve recently made is Lapham’s Quarterly. This publication pulls the golden nuggets out of history and complies them in a neat publication according to a central theme. I have decided to pay much less attention to the daily noise of the news, the gossips and the outright stupid splashed along the T.V. screens. Instead I have turned my focus to books, mostly historical nonfiction, and anything similar to Lapham’s Quarterly that really adds to my knowledge and gives me a greater understanding of this world I currently occupy.

Through these studies, travels and continual quest for more knowledge and in order to simply make sense of my surroundings, I’ve come to the conclusion that this world I live in is absurd. Now that I’ve given my introduction let me put down some examples from the silly to that which has changed the course of the world.

1. High Heels

- Once cannot venture outside without seeing multitudes of women wearing the most ridiculous form of footwear that while being extremely uncomfortable, also causes grotesque foot problems such as bunions. The high heel was designed in 17th century Persia as a riding shoe so that the rider could stand up in the stirrups and maintain balance while shooting his arrows.

After I learned this I can no longer look at women in high heels the same way. I do not find them as an attractive addition but rather as an absurdity akin to one wearing over sized clown shoes.

2. The suit and tie

We men did not escape this evolutionary comedy of the fashion trend either. The origin of the tie is that it was essentially a bib worn to protect the shirt from stains. The bib has just gotten smaller. The suit on the other hand came out of military uniform fashion. The military is regimented, disciplined and serious. The businessman being formal in all his dealings must give an air of seriousness and formality and thus what a better fit than the military uniform without the military trappings? So here we are, men running to our office to sit in our cubicles typing away in a modified military uniform and small bib.

Once you know the origins of why things are the way they are life becomes completely bizarre.

3. Wars

I have recently been reading books on WWI and II as well as checking the facts on many historical wars through Wikipedia. The conclusion I’ve come to is that war is absurd. What is even more absurd is how quickly a leader can convince the people about the “just” reasons for the war.

World War I is the most raw example of this. In brief, a rather significant regional assassination happens and then due to country alliances we end up with millions dead. It is as if monkeys wrote the framework of this play and gorillas carried it out. We do not retain the right to consider ourselves separate from the animals. The absurdity of the reasoning behind the war combined with the very real consequences are simply incomprehensible.

As for the absurdity of reasoning for war, this has happened very recently in my country. The slogan is “defending freedom.” Now whenever war or soldiers are mentioned this is what a good portion of the population mindlessly blurts out. Need to start a war? Just have the leaders say we are “defending freedom.” This slogan has had some wear and tear but still has at least another decade of durability before it is worn out.

My conclusion is that humanity is still very primitive and that this period in our evolution will be looked upon millennia from now as just branching off from the animals. For any reason, any reason what so ever millions and millions can still be convinced that extinguishing the life of another is the appropriate solution for whatever ideology, belief or passing issue of the day holds sway.

It is as though we are not fully conscious. For if we were fully conscious then the fibers of creation should tear apart while everyone screams in writhing agony for the atrocity, the unnatural, the unthinkable that has occurred.

4. Religion – Christianity

I hold no qualms with the overall spirituality and trying to connect ourselves with that which is unknown yet pervades everything including our own existence. I also am inclined to give a bit of a pass to those that need religion, a set framework to tell them exactly what to do since the majority of adults are unable to discover a spiritual side on their own. Most adults no longer advance mentally/intellectually and thus how could anyone expect them to make progress with that which cannot be seen, experienced directly or understood?

To get straight to the point here, after all my travels, experiences, studies, meditations, reflections and so on, I can definitively say that Jesus was just a man. I have extricated myself thoroughly from the fairy tale, the bedtime story that we use to sooth our fears about that which we do not know but which we pretend to hold every answer (unless it is a mystery of course *inside joke for those raised Catholic*).

To stand up against 2000 years of history which has reshaped the world, billions of believers and an institution which has outlasted governments and call it nonsense is frightfully empowering as well as bewildering. This belief, that a simple peasant is the son of the unknown which in our feeble minds we call God. This God, the soothing blanket which keeps us warm and secure against that unknown void, that veil behind which nobody has seen yet everyone must go is a creation of our own imagination. It is my opinion that we cannot even conceive of the true nature of the Great Spirit, الرحمن, יהו or whatever we have decided to call the unknown.

I have been connecting the dots for some time now and the tapestry is complete. Now, explaining exactly how I’ve arrived at this point would fill up a book which one day I may write but one can find clues in my previous posts from the past. But let us just say that a good many things in the Bible have turned out to be fabrications, metaphors, or just plain wrong. The world was not created in 7 days, humanity didn’t start with Adam and Eve, Jesus had brothers and was married and many of the miraculous acts happened in other cults/pagan beliefs long before Jesus.

If Christianity were a corporation it would have gone out of business a long time ago. Anyone who puts their money and belief in a corporation that has been so wrong so often throughout history would be an investment opportunity for the slow witted.

So why do so many people believe? The reasons are as varied as the stars but I would say the main reasons are tradition, security and the need to believe there is something more than the disappointment that is often found here in this existence.

The ship guiding my belief out of Christianity set sail a very long time ago and has visited many ports. I recently read a book which seems to me as my final bill of lading summing up what I already knew and putting it in a well researched, organized intellectual format. That book is called “Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth” by Reza Aslan.

Jesus was just a man and I feel as though I’m in a dream when I see so many clinging to this fabricated story even though we have more universities and more learning than at any other time in the history of the world.

The old religions die hard.

5. Reality

Most people at this point will either have stopped reading or want to know what my own opinion on creation/reality may be. People are so eager to know the opinions of those they disagree with not so they may consider the idea but rather to have the opportunity to defend their beliefs. One cannot readily do this until they know the beliefs of the other.

In any case, here is my belief.

I have no idea where I am, what I am or where this environment came from. All I know is that I have thoughts. These thoughts come and go and I do my best to control them.

This “I don’t know” is a very thought out, deep, reflected upon statement. It is just as probable to me that we are in a computer program designed by a highly advanced civilization as it is that this universe is some advanced biology student’s creation and we sit upon a shelf in a small jar surrounded by millions of other universes in small jars. The reader of this post may scoff but I have not said that I know we are in a small jar, I’ve said the opposite with a very clear “I don’t know.” The jar example is one possibility out of infinite possibilities the majority of which I believe I cannot even comprehend.

The book that really got me thinking about this was “Why Does the World Exist?: An Existential Detective Story ” by Jim Holt. He interviewed the brightest minds as well as researched the major philosophers in trying to discover the answer. Obviously the book never comes to the supreme truth and Jim’s own opinion is hidden in an unrelated paragraph in just one sentence in the middle of the book that most people might miss.

I enjoyed reading all of the theories but one of my major takeaways was the realization that I cannot comprehend these theories the way the men who created them can. Any one of them would take me years of study and even then I know I do not have the raw intellectual fire power to get there.

So all I can do is continue to explore and be completely fascinated as well as a little terrified at not having the answer. All I know are what my senses, studies and inquiries have gathered. Here we are, talking monkeys on a biological rock flying through space where only a fraction of us are trying to figure out what is going on while a good majority are quite certain they know the secrets of the universe, the divine and everything in between already.

This dream began with my birth and will end with my death. The longer the dream persists the more bizarre it becomes. The best I can do is to be nice to my fellow dreamers, help those having a nightmare and try as hard as I can to fly.

I saw this post on Google + and it was so good I had to borrow it. I have re-posted here so that I’ll always have it.

Written by: Yonatan Zunger – from Google +

Since I’ve heard that there’s some kind of religious festival going on this weekend, I thought it might be an interesting time to write something about the history of how Christianity came to have such a blend of non-Christian origins in it. There’s actually a very interesting history to this: in essence, it isn’t so much that Christianity absorbed external elements, as that through the tumult of the first six centuries CE, a bunch of European religions mixed and combined, and the Christianity we know today was the result of that — it got its name on the label, so to speak.

To realize how big the difference between what came out and what came in is, just pick up the Christian Bible and read through the discussions between Jesus and the Apostles. This was, originally, a Jewish reform movement, responding to the particular skews and corruptions that had shown up in the (Pharisaic) leadership, concerned with economic reform, (e.g. Luke 12) a hard shift away from ritual towards personal piety, (e.g. Matthew 15) and a serious mystical trend. (Largely cut out of the “canonical” texts, but very present in the Egyptian texts) The first radical change came with Paul, who was interested in converting outsiders — something that the earlier “followers of the Way,” as they called themselves, had very little interest in. But if you compare even Paul’s early churches with (say) medieval Christianity, or even most modern branches, you’ll see very little in common. How did this happen?

Let me start by setting up a few bits of history. We’re in the Classical Roman Empire, say around the year 100 CE. Rome is expanding everywhere; there’s a well-practiced routine when a new barbarian tribe is encountered. The Romans make offerings to the gods of that tribe, saying that they will build them a temple in Rome if they let this tribe be joined to the empire; then they go to war, win, and start to fold yet another tribe into the center. The erection of that temple isn’t something accidental: it’s part of what’s called the “Pax Deorum,” the peace of the gods, and what it really is is a public statement that these new people are being folded in to the society. These conquered barbarians aren’t at quite the same level as true Roman citizens, but they’re part of the Empire now, and light-years above those barbarians outside the gates. The physical mechanisms of the Empire are backed by a deep civic notion of “Romanitas;” to be a Roman is to be part of this great thing, to have a particular relationship to the outside world: we will conquer you and you will join us. And to be part of Romanitas is to have the weight of the Empire behind you.

And then it stopped working. Hadrian makes it halfway up Britain and builds a wall; and the Romans start to realize that they’re at the logistical endpoint of where they can conquer. A climate cycle drops food production down and leads to widespread famine and disease across Europe. Worse climate cycles to the east start to push nomadic tribes further out in search of resources, and they start to hit an already-weakening Empire. Without the constant influx of resources from conquered tribes, the underlying lack of planning in the Roman economy (and system of succession) starts to show; and from about 180 to 280, the Empire essentially collapses into an infinite sequence of famines, plagues, civil wars, and barbarian incursions. The last of these wars, the War of the Seven Emperors, is ended in 287 when Diocletian personally executes his last rival, and sets up a new regime.

Diocletian’s empire was very different from Caesar’s in a lot of interesting ways, but the one I want to talk about today is that notion of “Romanitas.” Once, to be a Roman meant that you were ready to conquer everyone that you met; but the later Roman Empire was in no state to do such a thing. The central question of civic identity — of what it even meant to be a part of this empire — didn’t have a good answer, and with it, the whole question of what held the Empire together at all was up in the air as well.

Now switch over and look at the religion of the time. If we rewind back to the year 100, the Latin word religio had a very different meaning from what we think of today: it was the set of public rituals that the society participated in. These were tremendously important in a lot of ways. First of all, they were a key economic glue. Roman society didn’t have a notion of “taxation” in the modern sense; but instead, leading citizens were expected to regularly have sacrifices to the Gods to honor their good fortune in various things. At a sacrifice, animals would be killed, their first fruits given to the Gods with various prayers, and what followed is what we would today call a “big damned barbecue.” A Roman could expect to go to a sacrifice every week or so on the average, and this was the primary access that most Romans had to meat. (So when I say “key economic glue” I mean “a major part of how the society got access to food.”) Second, they were the way in which people defined their civic nature. Today, we define our nationality in terms of things we learn in school, what we read in the papers and discuss in the media — all things which didn’t exist in Rome. The expression of nationality was the common rituals that people went to. (And this, incidentally, is why the cult of the Emperor was so important: by sacrificing to the Emperor, you were indicating your loyalty to the Emperor and the Empire) Public actions were the main way that people communicated their thoughts.

One thing you may notice is missing from that list is anything which resembles our modern notion of “faith.” This wasn’t an unfamiliar concept, but it wasn’t considered to be part of “religio.” People had household gods with which they had a personal relationship, and actual priests had relationships with their gods, but nobody was generally expected to have a deep and abiding religious faith in each god that showed up through the gate. But the urge for deeper religious experiences was certainly there, and ever since the time of Alexander the Great (around 300BCE) one of the main ways this manifested was in “mystery cults.”

Mystery cults were the religious secret societies of the ancient world. You could join some of them by simply walking in the door, and for others you had to know someone, but what they all had in common was that you would be initiated, participate in secret rituals, gradually learn more and more of the secrets of this god. These cults often taught a combination of mysticism, philosophy, and theology; they offered a chance to see into the world beyond; and they offered a close confraternity among the members. And they were quite separate from “religio” proper, bearing it about the same relationship that gentlemen’s clubs in Victorian England bore to Parliament.

There were a few categories of mystery cult which were becoming particularly popular in the first few centuries CE. The first was the cult of Magna Mater, which was basically the worship of Isis gradually transmuted into a pan-European religion. Consider that ancient Egyptian religion was already extremely, incomprehensibly ancient: the pyramids are a great work of the late Stone Age, as much older than the Romans as the Trojan War is older than us. The knowledge of hieroglyphs had already passed out of the world, but the infinite number of mummies and inscriptions and magical practices were still very much there. Add on to this that, even thousands of years earlier, Egyptian religion had highly favored spectacular, awe-inspiring temples where people went for rituals, healing, miracles, surrounded by fire, strange smokes, talking statues — and that this tradition was still very much alive — and you have a great factory of religious beliefs which were immensely popular in the Roman world.

Second was Mithraism, a religion that we still understand relatively little. Mithras was a warrior-god, of Persian origin; he has many similarities to similar warrior-gods spread across the Near East, not least the version of Yahweh worshipped in the western Levant which later became a core part of Judaism. In Rome, his worship became very popular among the army, starting with soldiers who had served in the east. The rituals were very secret, part of the brotherhood of joining the Roman Legions; underground caverns, secret dances, sacrifices, rituals that we know very little about today because they were actually fairly good at keeping their secrets, and quite deliberately didn’t write many things down.

The third was ascetic monasticism, something which never really caught on in Europe but which was a huge deal in Egypt for hundreds of years. There was a tradition of hermits retreating off into the desert to pray, fast, and generally mortify themselves, and these hermits were considered to be avatars of purity itself, holy, powerful, capable of great magics, and mad as a bag of clams. (As a side note, The Book of the Fathers, a book on how to be a good monk written in fragments from the 4th through 10th centuries, has lots of examples of the stories of early monks, who were basically Christian Egyptian ascetics. Something like two thirds of these stories end with either “and then he/she starved to death” or “and then he/she died in a sandstorm.” These guys werehard-core.)

And Christianity — Paul’s Christianity, the kind that wanted to spread — joined in to this mix. This early Pauline Christianity worshipped in secret, because it was defiantly anti-religio; this was honestly a holdover from its Jewish roots, with the Jews being rather famous for their (often violent) unwillingness to sacrifice to other gods. But it had many other familiar features: secret meetings in (literally) underground churches, intense personal faith, mystical healing, close confraternity between the followers. Unlike many of the other mystery cults, it was built fairly strongly around concepts of morality — another holdover both from its Jewish antecedents and from Jesus’ own focus on reforming Judaism towards personal religiosity.

These religious traditions competed with each other pretty openly. If you read Apuleius’ The Golden Ass (arguably the first novel), you’ll see all these conflicts show up in people’s daily lives. Laws were passed banning Christians from serving in the army — it would destroy unit cohesion, you see, and the men might feel uncomfortable. (Le plus que ça change…) And they also combined: Christianity became popular in Egypt, and people combined it with both Egyptian asceticism (to form the seeds of monasticism) and Manichaeanism, another Persian import from which Christianity got its notions of the duality of God and the Devil. The healing magics of Magna Mater stayed popular across the board, and Christians found themselves doing basically the same things.

(There’s a whole history here, too, of how these religions related to the earlier Roman political order.)

And around the year 300, these religious and political trends started to come together. The political order of the old religio made less and less sense: giant, formal, public rituals to the gods of old Rome didn’t pull people together the way they once did. But the underlying needs behind them, both civic and economic, were still there. By the time of the civil war that followed Diocletian’s retirement (a very interesting story in its own right), Mithraism was in a bit of a downturn, apparently not providing quite enough mysticism relative to simple brotherhood; Christianity had folded most of the magical elements of Magna Mater into itself, and had done a better job of conversion through its strategy of focusing on women, and soldiers, many of whose mothers had been converts, started to use it as their secret brotherhood ritual. Against this background, Constantine (one of the warring emperors) made it the quasi-official religion of his army, and soon after won control of the Empire.

What happened here was that a religious trend of secret societies, previously illegal in many situations, which thus tended to forge close relationships among the practitioners, suddenly became an official Thing which people realized they could further their careers by converting to. Many is the Roman nobleman of this period who went to bed one night, a contented pagan, and woke up the next morning a bishop, and a few hundred thousand solidi poorer. (That was the going rate for a bishopric) But this new religious system had communal identity baked so deeply into it, and held people together well enough (after all, that’s one of the big things Constantine used it for!) that it started to become a substitute for this now-missing identity.

Several things happened over the next hundred years which reinforced this, but perhaps the most dramatic was the sack of Rome in 410. It’s hard to express how world-shaking this was: imagine if, on 9/11, rather than destroying the Twin Towers in New York, the Taliban had simply marched in to New York City andsacked it, and the government was powerless to do anything about it. That’s roughly what happened then. And yet: the Goths who sacked Rome left the churches untouched — they, too, were Christians. Augustine used this as the jumping-off point for his book, The City of God, which crystallized the ideas that had been building up over the years: Christianity united its believers in a sort of world-spanning empire. This notion of Christianity as a social identity, rather than as a religious faith, became the cornerstone of European society for the next thousand years.

This answered the question of “how do we deal with those barbarians?:” If they were Christians, then you could use this common language of Christianity to establish relations with them. If they weren’t, you could convert them or kill them — or point your own friendly barbarians their way. It also provided a new social glue for the society, so long as everyone came over and converted.

And what you might notice is missing, again, from this picture is the modern notion of “faith.” It was important that everyone be a Christian because that was part of being part of the Empire, but the details weren’t quite as important. So the common variety of “conversion” in the Late Antique Empire went something like this:

A priest shows up in a village. The village is generally having some kind of major problem or another, whether it be a failed local irrigation system, or a famine, or a plague. The priest calls people together in the name of his god, and fixes the problem: either by prayer, or by getting people together to fix the well, or by pulling in external resources. (Most of the time, incidentally, the priest didn’t successfully fix the problem, in which case he simply would move on to the next village and try again) On success, the village praises God and converts. They have to give up “pagan rituals” — i.e., they have to adopt the forms of Christianreligio rather than whatever they did locally. But the underlying importance of the sacrifices (economic, civic, etc) was still there, so what was important was to do them in a Christian way. Do them in a church, not a cemetery. Praise a saint rather than a god, and so forth.

And then the priest would move on to the next town, racking this up as yet another successful conversion. But nobody was left behind in this town who actually had a particularly deep understanding of Christian doctrine; and in fact, owing to how bad travel was in the Empire at this point, it was often 100 yearsuntil the next priest would reach a particular village! So Europe “Christianized” by adopting a shared set of practices and religious language, but not a shared religious faith in the modern sense of the word.

The results of this weren’t fully appreciated until nearly a thousand years later, during the Counter-Reformation: in response to the rise of Protestantism, the Catholic Church started to try to root out “heresy” in its own world, and discovered (much to its shock) that the average Christian had absolutely no ideawhat the religion was supposed to mean. (A truly fascinating account of this can be found in The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, which studies the record of the heresy trial of some random schmuck who was grabbed by the Inquisition. The title comes from his attempt to explain just how the world was created.)

So when we talk about a “Christian syncretism,” what was happening wasn’t that Christianity deliberately or accidentally took on bits of other religions. Rather, most of the conversion of Europe — and very similarly, most of the conversion of other parts of the world later on — happened very quickly, with groups of people agreeing to take on the structural forms of Christianity, praying to saints in churches and so on, but with very little emphasis on constructing a shared “faith” in the modern sense.

In fact, this modern notion of faith came largely out of the Protestant reformation. The Protestants started out with a notion that people should have a direct, personal familiarity with scriptures and a much more personal relationship with God: ideas which hadn’t really entered much into the Christianity of the preceding millenium. The Catholics, in response, tried to “purify” their own faith and make sure that everyone was on the same page, using much the same techniques which they had developed for ensuring that there were no secretly practising Muslims or Jews in Spain after the Reconquista. (Yes, I know. You were expecting that the Spanish Inquisition would show up in here at some point.) Several centuries of spectacular bloodshed later, it was a commonly accepted idea in all branches of Christianity that Christianity was, first and foremost, about individual faith, and a common understanding of doctrine was what bound Christians together. But this hadn’t actually been a feature of Christianity ever since the days of Paul, and the Christianity of the 19th century is a very different beast from that in too many ways to count. It was a new thing.

So today, when people tell you about how Christianity has “borrowed” ideas from non-Christian religions, or that this or that holiday is actually a pagan festival in disguise, your surprise isn’t coming from the fact that Christianity ever was really a common religious language rather than a unified faith: it’s coming from the fact that, over the past few hundred years, Christianity has deeply rewritten its creed, and largely forgotten its own history. These things aren’t alien to Christianity at all: they’re the deepest part of its origins.

The best sources of all on this subject are books. Peter Brown’s The Cult of the Saints or The Rise of Western Christendom give an excellent snapshot of the Late Antique transition and can get you started looking for other things. Carlo Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms is a great way to see what ground-level faith in the sixteenth century looked like.

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Do yourself a favor. Call me crazy now, before you read the rest of this story. That way, this can be gotten out of the way, because what I am about to tell you, most of the public will not believe.

On September 11, 2001, there were no terrorist involved, as reported by the U.S. Government, in the attacks on the World Trade Centers or the Pentagon.

For those of you who haven’t called me a bunch of four letter words ( amongst other things ), and clicked to another page, let me try to explain.

The false flag operation on September 11, 2001, was a made for corporate controlled mass media event, to shock the public into it’s place, in order to achieve several goals. It was so well planned and orchestrated, that intelligence agencies from around the world, picked up on it as the real deal, and tried to warn the U.S. Government about pending attacks.

After sifting through various information sources for years, trying to make sense of the shocking day, I was listening to the weekly broadcast of KPFA’s, “Guns and Butter”. This show discusses The Economics of Politics. On this particular day, they were featuring screen writer and producer Art Olivier, with his movie “Operation Terror: The 9/11 Story You Are Not Supposed To Know”. After only the first few minutes of the show, with all of the information I already had, I knew that finally a lot of the pieces to the puzzle, on what actually lead up to the events of 9/11, were going to fall into place. If you are looking to watch this video in regular theaters, rent it from the normal channels, or even watch it online: FORGET ABOUT IT. This movie was banned, because it got too close to the truth. Because I am so interested in the subject matter, because it effects so much of the world around me, I found that it was the one of the best $25 investments, I have ever made.

The key to seeing the truth, is the conditioning of the mind. I am never going to be able to counter the overpowering mass media, and the message’s they have to push, with my writings on this blog. It is up to the individual to take steps, to find out how the world they are a part of, really operates in the background. If someone asks me about a starting point, I would immediately direct them to L. Fletcher Prouty’s book, “The Secret Team”. Until one understands the foundation and rogue behavior of the CIA, several things will always be cloudy. And trust me, when I first started to read this book, I felt the author was off of his rocker, and set it down. But after encountering information over the next six months, that showed me that the author knew what he was talking about, I picked the book back up, and read it from cover to cover.

The intelligence community has a term for building a legend for someone. It is called “sheep dipping”. This is done, by taking a designated person who is an intelligence “asset”, and either sending him/her or their “double” to places of interest, on various tasks, to display a desired behavior, to influence the minds of the people they encounter. In a nutshell, they are building a legend for themselves. In the case of the “purported” 9/11 terrorist, one example of this, was the flight school training for commercial airliners. All of the so called terrorist, were intelligence assets, that got paraded around the United States, leaving the trail of a legend built, to tie up the story, in the aftermath of 9/11.

One important main asset that wasn’t paraded around the United States, but served as the figure head, was the very sick with ailing kidneys, Osama Bin-Laden. A very big CIA asset, from the days of the Cold War. This man was being kept alive, through dialysis treatment, at the American Hospital in Pakistan, so he could take the blame. Most likely, this chap has been dead for over a decade now, but that sure didn’t stop “doubles” and fake tapes from showing up, in order to chase him and his supporters, around the world.

Now at this moment, you may be asking yourself: If there were no terrorist, then who hijacked the planes. There was a “hijacking” of planes, but not as the “official” story presented it. The hijacking occurred electronically. Empty planes, that were modified to be controlled as “drones”, electronically “hijacked” the signature of actual flights, before being redirected. Two of the aluminum/fiberglass based planes hit the World Trade Centers, towers 1 and 2, which were built to survive this impact. As most know, these two tower ended up collapsing. This happened along with the collapse of WTC building 7, that had no impact, but contained records for certain sensitive investigations, that the powers to be would love see disappear. In comes nano thermite. A very fine thermite that burns super fast and super hot, that was found in the debris of the buildings. If you paint this stuff inside, along with attaching some remote detonators, then you have the making of a controlled demolition.

The other drone was used as cover before pulling up, for a cruise missile that penetrated the reinforced walls of the Pentagon, a lot better than a aluminum/fiberglass commercial airliner would.

The so called plane crash in Pennsylvania appears to be a prepared crater, where an actual airliner was shot down to provided the debris, but missed the mark. This is still a little fuzzy.

Now at this point, if you are ready to kick my teeth out, to teach me a lesson, please answer this question first: If this was really the work of terrorist, how did they coerce to United State into running about 46 military war games/disaster exercises around the same time, turning some of them “live” in the confusion of the day, in order to pull off the feat?

–Big Mike

Sources for information:

Book – Crossing the Rubicon, by Michael C. Ruppert
Book – The Secret Team, by L. Fletcher Prouty
Book – 9/11 Synthetic Terror, Made in USA, by Webster Griffin Tarpley
Movie – Operation Terror: The 9/11 Story You Are Not Supposed To Know. DVD $20 + $5 Shipping.
Radio – Guns and Butter: KPFA Wednesdays at 1:00pm. Show archives online at kpfa.org.

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Again, it has been a very long time since my last post. The reason is laziness, pure and simple.

But tonight, as I glare into the never ending stream of news on my Iphone I find myself overwhelmed by the amount of stupid I am reading. As I am still very much in lazy mode, I really do not feel like putting too much effort into this post. I simply want to do a quick brain dump and get back to my magazines. My blood is boiling though and I don’t think I’ll be able to rest until I get it out of my system.

A. US Election

Obama wins the election and the Republicans throw a fit. In their own words they tell us that Obama won due to the young, the minorities, the educated, the women and so on and so on.

So who voted for Romney then? Well, let’s take a look at the map. Do you see anything interesting here? The states with a more intelligent population (California, New York, Washington etc) all voted for Obama. The States with a massive amount of farmland and much less education (and the South, no surprise) voted for Romney.

This really isn’t rocket science – areas with more education voted blue and those with less voted red. It is as simple as that.

Furthermore the Republicans cannot stop saying extremely idiotic things. It does not matter who said what but let me just jot down a few things from memory.

1. Legitimate Rape – Female body has ways to shut the whole thing down 2. Too many black people were voting in areas that don’t have many black residents 3. Obama bought the votes of the young and the blacks. 4. We want to secede from the United States!

It seems the Republicans have a complete monopoly on idiocy since all of the above have come from the Republican camp. Perhaps it is akin to a young child throwing a tantrum when things do not go his way. Little Johnny didn’t win the basketball game so he not only throws the ball into the neighbors yard but starts running in circles screaming incoherently.

So let’s sum this all up. 1. The states with smarter populations (computers, finance, rocket science) voted blue. The states with plenty of farms and the South voted Republican. (No surprise from the South for obvious reasons.)

2. Republicans cannot seem to stop saying very idiotic things. One of the dumbest things said happens to come Mitt Romney who only a few weeks ago happened to be their champion and who they now cannot get far enough away from.

3. More than a few would like to secede from the Union. I say give Texas back to Mexico and let’s watch those idiots have a complete brain hemorrhage when they realize they are now surrounded by people who are NOT English speaking 45 year old white men.

B. Petraeus

First let me say that in regards to his affair I wish the USA were a bit more like France. Petraeus did turn a war around and by all accounts was a very good General. I’m sure he can and did do a fine job at the CIA. If he wants to have a little something on the side in his private life then it should stay private. Unfortunately we are all still very much Puritans in this country and therefore we must expose these fornicators and publicly shame them! (Then we can return to whatever sex themed sitcom happens to be our favorite which ironically glorifies a loose lifestyle.)

Regarding the Benghazi Attack – Petraeus is called to testify and says it was terrorism. Here is a newsflash. It was terrorism. The Obama administration needed time to get the facts and even after they had them they did play down the fact that it was terrorism. Why? Because it would make them look weak on security and given the Republicans something to use during the campaign. Why is the US having a congressional committee on this? Because the Republicans absolutely hate Obama and want to attack him in any way they can. It is all political theater.

Hopefully, some leaders somewhere are actually doing the right thing and instead of playing politics are strengthening security no matter what the Republicans or Democrats say.

C. Israel and Gaza

Here we go again. In this part of the post I am only speaking to those who are worldly and educated enough to just feel sad about this whole conflict. Israel has a right to exist and defend themselves. Unfortunately, in doing so they oppress, enslave and murder an entire group of people. The oppressed become the oppressors. There is no right answer here and I feel very sad for all of the death.

What I hate most of all is how in the West we will never read about any of the Israeli guilt in these conflicts. The media will always fault the Palestinians. Furthermore, I hate how we no longer just read about all of this, but now we have video so we can feed off the sorrow, the death and destruction for our own entertainment purposes. This is our dark side. We want to press the play button on the video, we want to see a missile strike and we want to see dead bodies. This is something most people will not admit to themselves, they will suppress the modicum of guilt deep into their gut as they hit the play button and enjoy the adrenaline as they wait for the missile to strike and death to happen on their Iphone.

This type of media gets the population excited and thus it gets clicks which add to the bottom line. I cannot think of anything more American than showing actual death, happening thousands of miles away in order to make a profit. It is capitalism at its finest. Cameras in place to stream the carnage by satellite directly to each and every device where we gain a rush, and a dark satisfaction from real live death, while in the corner of our eyes an advertisement for Coca Cola creeps into our subconscious. Such a marriage of technology, death and profit is almost like a beautiful requiem, so much so that it almost brings a tear to my eye.